He chuckles as if he’s in on some joke. “You’ve got to let it go. Otherwise you’ll drive yourself insane. Trust me, I know. And you should know since you so eagerly tried the same move on my wife last year.”
“Yeah, sorry about that, man,” I apologize.
“So the tables have turned and you’re about to smash every guy in this room for looking at your woman.”
“I can take them out easily. Especially that fucker on the left,” I grit.
“You’ll spend a lifetime fighting it off. You need to find a way to control the jealousy. It’s a balancing act. Let her think you’re cool but never—and I repeat never—take your eyes off the prize.”
I don’t know how Lex is so calm about all of this. His wife is standing next to my girl. The beasts are probably thinking of how to bag the both of them in one go. The waiter returns but not quickly enough. I grab the scotch and down it in almost one gulp. It burns my throat and follows up with a numbing sensation. It doesn’t stop me from seeing red.
“If that’s what I gotta do, then I’ll spend my life fighting every fucker that thinks they can go near her.”
She doesn’t realize what she does to me. To every man in this room. Except for Lex. He’s fighting his own battles, despite being in denial.
It’s been over a year since I made it my mission to crawl under her skin. The woman who drove me to the brink of insanity. And she had no clue either. Because beneath her mass of curls was a hardheaded, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes, feisty woman that rubbed me the wrong way. Boy, did that backfire. I thought fucking her in the alley and leaving her pussy wet with no happy ending would teach her a fucking lesson. It taught me a lesson. You play with fire, you get burned. The amount of shit I did to forget her was all a waste a time.
But I wouldn’t change it.
My son is my fucking life.
And running through his veins is the blood of this woman that consumes me. It’s not just her wild hair that cascades down her back and covers her body like a Greek goddess.’ It’s everything about her. The way her big brown eyes stare back at me, drawing me in enough that I could climb into her soul and bury myself there. How her body begs me to take her, whenever and wherever.
Whenever . . . wherever . . .
I’ve got it. Why didn’t I think of this earlier?
You did, moron. You’re always thinking about it. This is what happens when you’re in love with a beautiful woman.
I finish the drink in my hand and place it on a table, abandoning Lex without another word. Walking straight
to her, I don’t break my gaze until she stops mid-sentence as my body presses against her back. My hands move around her hips and I pull her closer till my cock is nestled in her ass.
Yeah, I’m hard. What’s fucking new?
“Look who’s here. What, aren’t we allowed to talk to your girlfriend?” Kate teases, laughing along with Lex’s wife, Charlie.
“Stop teasing him, Kate. It’s this man thing they all have to do,” Charlie chastises.
Kate rolls her eyes at Charlie. “Yeah, you should know. Your man is over there practically eye-fucking you.”
Charlie scans the room and spots Lex. “Oh . . . the joys of being eye-fucked. I’ll see you ladies later.”
I don’t give Presley an opportunity to say anything as I excuse us from Kate.
“Haden, what’s wrong? Where are we going?”
Pulling her along, I weave my way in and out of the crowd until we are outside in the lobby. I look to my left, then to my right. There it is. My savior for tonight.
“Come with me.”
Puzzled, she follows me until we are at the lobby desk. There is a bench located in front and I tell her to take a seat.
“Wait here,” I instruct.
At the counter, I pull the young busboy aside and whisper in his ear, “Key to the cloakroom.”
I’m hoping he is smart enough to read between the lines since I’m holding out a hundred-dollar bill. At first he watches the people behind me, then takes the cash. “Alright. But you’ve got fifteen minutes, then my boss is back.”